Monday, June 23, 2014

Final Award in the IFS Sri Lanka legal dispute

As reported previously, IFS has since 2002 been involved in a legal dispute concerning the partly-owned company IFS Sri Lanka. In October 2012, the counterparty in the dispute initiated arbitration proceedings against IFS with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, on the basis of a shareholders’ agreement between the parties.

In the arbitration proceedings, the counterparty initially claimed compensation for damages in the amount of US$ 76 million including interest. However, the claim was later revised upwards. The revised claim was unspecified but could be understood to mean that IFS’ half-owned company IFS Sri Lanka be paid an amount in the range of US$ 237–535 million including interest, and that an unspecified amount be distributed as dividends to the owners.

Since the beginning of the legal dispute, IFS has deemed the counterparty’s allegations as completely unsubstantiated and without any merit and the claims raised in the arbitration proceedings have been rejected by IFS in their entirety as being frivolous and completely unmeritorious and unfounded.

The arbitral tribunal’s Final Award was received by IFS on June 20, 2014. In the Final Award, the counterparty’s claims have been completely rejected and it is declared that IFS did not breach the shareholders’ agreement as alleged by the counterparty. The counterparty has also been ordered to pay for the main part of the fees of the arbitral tribunal and a substantial portion of IFS’ legal costs in the proceedings.

About IFS

IFS™ is a globally recognized leader in developing and delivering business software for enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and enterprise service management (ESM). IFS brings customers in targeted sectors closer to their business, helps them be more agile and enables them to profit from change. IFS is a public company (XSTO: IFS) that was founded in 1983 and currently has over 2,600 employees. IFS supports more than 2,200 customers worldwide from local offices and through partners in more than 60 countries. For more information visit: www.ifsworld.com.